Modeling Seagrass growth under effects of trace heavy metals in estuarine wetlands

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Tao Sun, Haiying Lin

Tuesday 30 june 2015

12:30 - 12:33h at Asia (level 0)

Themes: (T) Managing deltas, (ST) Impacts of urbanization and land reclamation, Poster pitches

Parallel session: Poster pitches: 5C. Deltas - Impacts

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Seagrass declines have been due to many factors that attribute both natural and anthropic contributions. Of all human impacts, eutrophication is considered to have the most widespread impact on seagrass, whereas toxic chemicals, such as trace heavy metals, herbicides and pesticides, and petrochemicals are also thought to be major factors. Most of the trace heavy metals research has focused on the accumulation of metals into seagrass. Scientific knowledge on several issues of metal affect seagrass growth is limited. And seagrass growth models in prior studies had investigated the single and coupled relationship between lights change and nutrients in regions which seldom consider influences of pollution factors such as trace heavy metals. In this study, we developed a dynamic model for predicting influences of trace heavy metals in the growth of seagrass photosynthesis, respiration, and sloughing dynamics as well as by rate at which carbon is transported between roots to shoot processes. The heavy metal as the variables is introduced into the processes of photosynthesis.Effect of different types of trace heavy metals were included in the relationship between the heavy metals concentrations and seagrass biomass. Overall, the results indicated that the developed model is a viable method to determine the relationship between seagrass growth and distributions of trace heavy metals under effects of human activities in estuarine wetlands.